Youth baseball coach intercepts ICE agents approaching kids: ‘I'm willing to die'
Youman Wilder, the founder of Harlem Baseball Hitting Academy, said that he found himself in that exact position. And he didn't hesitate.
'I heard them saying, 'Where are you from? Where are your parents from?'' Wilder told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace. 'And I just stepped in and said this is very inappropriate to ask these kids anything ... I'm just going to have them implement their Fifth Amendment right, and not say anything to you.''
He said that one of the agents responded, 'Oh, another YouTube lawyer.'
Wilder asked the kids to move to the back of the batting cage while he talked to the agents from its only entrance.
'I got some tough New York City kids, so for them to be scared, it means something is really happening,' said Wilder in an interview with CNN. As the kids shuffled away from the agents, Wilder said he reassured them by saying, 'Listen, I'm not going to let them get through me.'
In the same CNN interview, Wilder continued, 'I just said to myself, 'I'm willing to die to make sure you get home.' He even doubled down on his statement, saying, 'I'm willing to die today.'
Wilder wants to make it clear that the kids who play baseball with him are upstanding kids with bright futures, not victims. In fact, 45 of his players have been drafted to the Major League.
'We graduated 400 kids out of college who walk around with degrees from Stanford and Princeton and Harvard. All African American and Latino kids,' he told Wallace. 'So, we're not going around saying, 'Poor little us,' because we do very, very good work.'
In the end, he said, it's all comes down to protecting others — especially kids.
'We have to have people speaking up and we have to have a better way to do this stuff,' Wilder said. He added, 'We have to care about people, young people.'
Wilder told Wallace that as he confronted the armed ICE agents, 'The only thing I had that day was my Uncle Pete, who's my bishop, my mother in my ear, the Constitution and prayer.'
Since the interview aired on MSNBC on July 14, an ICE spokesperson stated, 'ICE has not conducted any recent enforcement activity in the vicinity of Riverside Park.'
Wilder stated that the officers were armed and wearing camouflage uniforms that identified them as ICE agents.
New York Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, who represents the Upper West Side, mentioned the confrontation in her newsletter.
'I recently learned that ICE agents approached a group of kids attending baseball practice near the batting cages near West 71st Street in Riverside Park,' Rosenthal wrote, as first reported by ILovetheUpperWestSide. 'The only thing that stood between those kids in Riverside Park and a Florida detention center buried deep in the Everglades was a brave coach who knew the law. Each one of us has the power to make a difference right in our own backyards.'
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